Doctor Who_ The Banquo Legacy - Andy Lane [98]
I sniffed. ‘More luck than judgement, I’d say.’
The grin was wiped abruptly from his face. ‘There’s no such thing as luck, Mr Hopkinson. Those of us who fight on the side of good often find that the universe smiles on their wilder schemes. It’s what’s kept me alive so far.’ His boyish smile returned. ‘My attacker came upon me in the dark; we struggled, and I pretended to fall over the edge. In truth I hid myself just beneath the overhang, where the grotto was intended to be. My attacker assumed I was dead and went on his merry way. I still didn’t get a good look at him, despite the sheer ingenuity of my plan, but as we now know it was Simpson.’
‘Simpson?’ I gasped, as much out of incredulity as shortness of breath.
‘Of course.’ He seemed surprised that I needed to ask. ‘Watch that branch there, won’t you? So having been apparently removed from the board I decided I would do better to stay put and play dead for a while. Had to do without my coat before I could borrow a new one from Sir George’s room – which is where you found me – but no pain, no gain, as they say.’
‘The gain being?’ I enquired.
‘Well, it took me out of the picture and allowed me to snoop about a bit.’
‘Trying to identify your attacker – the murderer, you thought?’
‘What? Oh, no. Something much more important than that.’
‘More important.’
‘Mmm,’ he agreed lightly. ‘Still haven’t found it, though. And I wasn’t being as clever as I thought anyway. But then I didn’t know about the rats.’
By now I had decided that he was rambling, saying anything to keep the conversation going and me distracted from the real and ever-closer danger that was stalking after us.
‘Simpson probably knew about Harries for a while. Through the rats. Maybe it was even an intentional side effect, something he let happen to smoke me out as it were. Who knows?’
‘Who indeed?’ I gasped. As I spoke, I stumbled. Behind me, as I fell, I saw Harries stepping inexorably forward; closer. He pushed on through the glistening darkness. Closer. I pulled myself up again and staggered after the Doctor.
‘So, what is it between you and Simpson?’ I asked. Better to talk. Even nonsense.
‘Oh, nothing personal.’ He held back a tree branch to allow me to pass. When he let go it showered snow into Harries’s path. The Doctor stared at the approaching figure for a brief moment. ‘Doesn’t give up, does he?’ He shook his head as if slightly annoyed at the inconvenience, as if he had better and more urgent things to be doing. ‘In a strange way,’ he said, ‘it’s about love. Love of independence and personal responsibility on the one hand; love of form and structure on the other. And, in Simpson’s case, I suspect a more personal attachment as well. Romana is as beautiful now as she ever was, and there aren’t many of us who would spend a hundred years on a mission for the sake of duty.’
‘Not that it matters now,’ I grumbled, perplexed.
He seemed genuinely annoyed at the sentiment. ‘Oh, it matters now more than ever. And increasingly by the moment.’
I did not reply. I had no breath.
The trees parted for Harries as they hemmed us in. He was closing on us, yet he did not hurry, did not quicken his pace. He did not have to. And as we slowed we became increasingly aware of the apparition at our backs, the moonlight reflecting upwards from the snow, picking out the pale bone of his partially blackened skull beneath the unthawed snow as he lurched after us. Closer. Only his eyes – or what was left of them – failed ever to catch the snow-shroud light. The black of his mind, of his intent, seemed to thrive in the holes that were his eyes. Was it out of some perverse sense of